Every Time is Like the First
by TheBucketWoman
Summary: Jay Hogart, missing for weeks, is found wandering a neighboring town with little cash, no ID and no idea who he is.
1. Chapter 1

Every Time Is Like the First

By TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with _Degrassi_ or anything else I reference herein. No profit is being made and no infringement intended

A/N: There's some language and offstage (and eventually the possibility of onstage) violence going on in this fic. If that upsets or offends you unduly, it would be good to give this one a pass.

1.

Spinner Mason looked up from his counter and saw Tony Balducci, also known as Jay's boss, staring at him. Tony was not what anyone would call a regular customer, so it couldn't have been the burgers pissing him off.

"Coffee?" Spinner asked.

"Where the Hell is he?" Tony asked. "You know?"

"Who," Spinner asked. "Jay?" _Duh, you idiot_, Spin thought. _Who else?_ Tony looked like he wanted to kick someone's ass. Jay was the one who usually caused people to make that face.

Spin automatically poured Tony a coffee and had already made up his mind not to accept any cash from the man. It was Time to Try to Get Jay out of Trouble and Spin planned to do whatever he could to butter Jay's boss up. A happily sugared and caffeinated man was a man who was less likely to give someone the ax.

"You seen him?" Tony asked, accepting the sugar and half & half when Spinner offered them. He hadn't struck Spin as a light-n-sweet sort of a guy, but you never could tell.

Spinner shook his head. Jay usually came in every day or two but it occurred to him that he hadn't seen him for a few days. It was a little weird but not unheard of. Maybe he just discovered the Indian takeout place that opened a few blocks away. He'd be back after the tandoori honeymoon was over.

"Well, he didn't show up yesterday or today," Tony said. He took a gulp. "No call, no nothing. Not like him."

_Crap_, Spinner thought. _This calls for donuts_. He popped a glazed one and a maple sugared one onto a plate and slid it in front of Tony.

"No need to fill me full of sugar, kid; I ain't firing him _yet_. I just want some answers," Tony said, taking a bite out of the glazed. "I've been calling his phone all morning. All I wanna know is whether I should be worried or if I can go back to being pissed."

"Hmm," Spinner said. Tony obviously thought this was serious, and continued to nag Spin until he told the cook, Will, to keep an eye on things till Peter came in. It was slow, and it wouldn't take Spinner and Tony too long to go to Jay's and beat his probably hungover ass for not picking up his phone.

At the front door, Spinner buzzed Jay's apartment and waited. After ten minutes of no answer, he tried the door and realized that the landlord still hadn't fixed the lock.

"Come on, I know I pay the kid better than this," Tony joked. He sounded a little nervous and that made Spinner nervous, so that he banged on Jay's door a little harder than he meant to, wincing when the noise made someone's dog bark.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Jay," Spinner muttered, trying the doorknob even though he expected it to be locked. It wasn't.

Spinner, admittedly, had seen a few too many cop shows, but the sight of the open door, the sound of that dog barking and nothing else, and the smell of some food having clearly gone off, creeped him out. And that dog, wherever the hell it lived, kept friggin barking. There was just something too _Law and Order_ about the whole thing. Spinner was sure, suddenly, that he'd walk as far as the kitchen and see a bloody leg sticking out of the bedroom.

But he couldn't stop himself. Steeling themselves for whatever carnage awaited, they took a couple of steps in and stopped. On the coffee table in front of the TV, there was an open container of what might have been General Tso's Chicken. From where he stood, Spin could see that it was crawling with maggots. Jay's cell was next to it. Spin stared as a couple of the little squirmy bugs tried to slither to the phone. It was fascinating, in a way and not that different from his old ant farm. Tony went in a few more steps, just enough to be sure that the bedroom and bathroom were empty.

The sound of Tony snapping his fingers in front of his face woke him up.

"Shit," Spinner said. "Um…"

"Don't touch anything," Tony said, taking out his phone. "Don't move." Next thing they knew, cops were absolutely everywhere, asking the same questions over and over and taking pictures and doing other cop stuff. He passively answered the questions. Yes, they were pretty good friends. Yes, Jay had a girlfriend, but she was a couple thousand miles away right now. No, he hadn't seen him since Wednesday or Thursday. Maybe Friday morning, so that was, what? Four days?

Damn.

He gave several phone numbers to the police. Manny in LA. Alex. He mentioned one of Jay's uncles, but could not supply the man's number. And there was also the one who almost handled Spin's divorce. He'd ask Emma when she got out of class, but if she didn't still have his card, they'd have to check Jay's phone, once they dusted it, or whatever it was they had to do to the thing. After that, it might need a charge before they could use it. He always let the battery die. One of the bugs had almost reached it. Spinner found himself rooting for it. _You're almost there! Don't give up!_ He thought. Then he shook his head to clear it because that was a messed up thing to be thinking about.

"Do you need to sit down, sir?" one of the cops asked. Took him a minute to realize the cop was talking to _him_. The cop ushered him into the hall so that he could rest on some steps.

"Naw, I'm okay," Spinner said, realizing he'd just been babbling about Jay's phone and possibly even the bugs. He wasn't sure. "What do you think that was? General Tso's?"

"I don't know, sir, but maybe you should take a few deep breaths. Out here, by the window."

"I'm okay," Spin repeated. "It's just a little creepy in there."

"Spin," Tony called. "Maybe you should get back to work or whatever. I think I can take care of the rest of this for now."

Spinner looked at his watch. _Shit._ It was after three already; the place would be full. The cops were okay with letting him go. They took his contact info and sent him on his way.

2.

Peter Stone got to the Dot to start his shift and found a total madhouse. Asked Will where the boss went but Will didn't know.

"Said he'd be right back," Will said, dumping some fries into the oil and shaking salt into the basket that he'd just taken out.

Peter guessed that Spin was just out on a quick marital booty call. It was what Peter would do in his place, after all. He grinned and made a mental note to tease him about it.

Half an hour later, while balancing several dishes on each arm and taking tiny steps to keep them balanced, Peter decided that it wasn't cute anymore. Boss or no boss, Spin needed to get his ass back there and help.

It took Spinner about another fifteen or twenty minutes to get back.

"What the hell?" Peter asked.

"Don't ask," Spinner said. He passed by, almost oblivious to all the snapping fingers in the room. He went behind the counter and when Peter got back there, he saw the guy washing his hands till they were bright red.

"Dude!" Peter said.

"Who's the tuna wrap for?" Spinner asked. A blonde raised her hand. He brought it over to her as Peter watched incredulously.

"Hey!" Spinner said. "Wake up, we got people to feed."

3.

When her phone rang, Manny Santos had been watching a _Buffy_ rerun and working her way through some chicken alfredo from the pizza place down the block. The caller ID said _Restricted_.

"Is this Manuela Santos?" a way too official sounding voice said.

"Um, yes," she said.

"I'm Detective Rodriguez from the Toronto Police Department," the voice said. And just like that, Manny scoured her mind for anything that she might possibly have done wrong. Ever. In her life. She wondered exactly how seriously the Toronto Police took it if you forgot and threw your newspaper in the wrong bin.

"I'm calling to ask about a Jason Hogart, and I'm told that you have a relationship with him?"

_Jay, you son of a bitch,_ Manny thought. _What did you do this time?_

"Why?" she asked. "What happened?"

"I'm told that you're his girlfriend, is that accurate?"

"What—?" Manny asked, then, sensing she wouldn't get anywhere until she answered the question, said that she was his girlfriend. She used the present tense with the cop, but the past tense had begun to enter her brain. "What happened?"

"I need to ask you about his whereabouts, ma'am. Have you seen or heard from him lately?"

"I'm in _Los Angeles_," she said. "So no. I haven't seen him in a couple weeks at least. Is he in some kind of trouble?" _Say no, say no, oh God, say no,_ she thought. Then she thought. _That asshole, if he's in trouble again, I will dump his ass so fast—_

"Well, Miss Santos," the cop began, "I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but we've received a missing persons report on a Jason Hogart and we want to cover all of our bases. Contact his family, friends in the hopes that he might be there with them."

"So he's not in any trouble?" Manny asked, though she doubted they'd tell her if he was, in case she was hiding him.

The detective might have thought that was a weird thing to say. "Well, ma'am, his employer and a friend of his have filed this report and are clearly quite concerned for him, so we're working to find Mr. Hogart and hopefully bring him home safe."

"Oh my God," Manny said. "Um…no, I haven't heard from him." She'd actually sent off a couple of angry messages in the last day or so, referring to Jay as He Who Does Not Answer Texts. She'd assumed he'd just left his phone at work over the weekend or something stupid like that, but the cop was really starting to scare her. The detective wanted her to write down some contact information so she had to keep him hanging for a minute while she found a pen and paper.

After she hung up, Manny put her phone down and stared at her dinner until her brain connected the words "missing" and "person" to her boyfriend. Manny picked up her phone again and scrolled down to S, for Spinner, yelling at him as soon as he picked up.

"Spinner! What the fuck?" Manny began, and didn't stop until she ran out of breath.

Spinner didn't know much, just gave her a rundown of what he'd seen. Deserted, unlocked apartment. Rotting food. Cell phone. "You'd have called the cops, too, Manny. He left his place in some major hurry. Some shit happened; I just don't know what." A million possibilities ran through her mind, none of them sounded like they'd end well. Some of them ended with a high speed chase somewhere. Others involved chalk outlines.

"What could have happened?" she whispered.

"I dunno," Spinner said. "The cops got nothing. Alex just called me. She's got nothing. Cops called his Dad, too, I think."

"Well, I'm coming," Manny said.

"Yeah. I think you better," he said. He didn't argue, which meant he was pretty worried. She heard Emma's voice in the background and then Spinner put his phone on speaker mode so they could all talk for a while, mostly about how soon she thought she could get there and who would pick her up from the airport.

"It's gonna be okay, Manny," Emma lied.

"Yeah," Manny lied. "I know." She hung up and stared out the window for a second, trying to think of what she needed to do. She'd been planning to go home at the end of the week anyway, having just finished ADR for _Morning Theft,_ previously known as _The Untitled Michael Ray Project_. She'd been planning to show up early, ironically, to surprise Jay. While waiting for her time in the recording booth, she'd stayed awake by imagining his reaction if she let herself into his apartment and waited for him wearing only her new heels. And maybe his baseball cap.

Now, all she wanted was to see him and get to the bottom of whatever mess he'd fallen into.

3.

This was not the first time Jay had disappeared. It probably wasn't the _fifth_ time he'd disappeared, in fact. So really, Max Hogart mused, one would think that he'd be used to this sort of thing by now. That he'd stop imagining the moment he'd be asked to identify his son's body.

But the novelty never quite wore off. Every time was like the first.

Max hadn't seen his son in four years. His brother Larry had occasional contact, but it had been his brother in law, Steve, who had gotten the call that Jay'd gone missing _again_. Steve was the one who had met Jay's friends. _Steve_ was the one who talked to him, who hadn't managed to alienate him so completely.

But, Max told himself, that was not important. What was important was where Jay'd gone this time. This was different from all the other times he'd taken off. When Max heard about the untouched food and the unlocked door, he started to imagine the worst.

Shortly after the Toronto police contacted him, Max got another phone call, this time from some kid with Keanu Reeves' voice. He took him for a telemarketer, almost hanging up on him, but then he mentioned Jay, and Max ended up staying on the line for over an hour, only stopping because the boy, Spinner, was clearly starting to sag.

The next day, Max and Steve drove to the little burger joint where Spinner worked. The place was closed, and a little empty for Max's taste, the only thing saving it from being depressing was the lingering smell of burgers and onion rings. And coffee.

The door opened, and Steve greeted Spinner properly, shaking his hand and patting his shoulder, like they were old friends. Steve, though technically a little young for the job, came off more like Jay's father than Max did. And that wasn't depressing at all. Not a bit.

Meanwhile, this Spinner, though Max had expected a typical stoner, seemed entirely too sober and at that moment, a little more grown up than Max felt. He watched the kid bustle around the empty restaurant. He gestured at the counter.

"Mr. Hogart," he said, pointing to a seat. So _he_ was Mr. Hogart, but the kid was on a first name basis with Steve.

A really cute blond introduced herself as Emma, Spinner's wife. The kid didn't look old enough to qualify for a library card, but he had a wife. Another kid, Peter, his name was, informed Max that Spinner was essentially running the restaurant at his age. When Max was his age he could barely remember to keep his car gassed.

And then…

"Mr. Hogart?" a nervous voice said from behind him. He turned around to see a brunette that he'd somehow missed on the way in.

"Max," he said, automatically.

"Okay, Max," she said. "I'm Manny."

"The girlfriend," Peter piped up. Everyone ignored him.

"I've been wanting to meet you forever," Manny said.

"Oh, well," Max said, suddenly wishing he'd changed into something less wrinkly before he came. "Thanks. It's nice to meet you." _Wish I'd heard of you before today._ He took a minute to wonder when the last time he'd met any of Jay's girlfriends, or his friends for that matter. He remembered him running around with another brunette, but he hadn't once spoken to her. He'd never felt like the type of father that was welcome in teenage company. He'd wanted to be the Dad who stocked the fridge with pizza rolls and let the whole neighborhood hang around. He turned out to be a dad of the lowercase _d_ variety. The one whom his own kid wouldn't talk to. He's been told that he can be more than a little cold, standoffish even, but this girl either didn't notice or didn't really care. She grabbed his arm and led him to the counter, sitting next to him.

"So," she said. "Want some fried stuff? Because I could really use some fried stuff."

"Fried stuff it is," he said.

"The usual?" Spinner asked her.

"Yeah," she said, then, turning to Max. "Would you like a Spinwich?" She described what went into one or those and laughed at the look of horror on Max's face.

"Gotta work your way up to a Spinwich," Spinner said, also seeing his face. "How 'bout a cheeseburger?"

"Best offer I've had all year," Max said.

Of course, Steve decided to live dangerously and order that Spinwich monstrosity, which got him a high five from Peter. Steve had just turned thirty-six and maybe looked about thirty. Max himself was fifty-one, but in his rumpled suit he thought that he could probably pass for sixty. This meant that the kids were way more comfortable talking to Steve, and for a change, that was okay because Max was damned if he could think of thing one to say.

"How was your flight, Manny?" Steve asked.

"It was okay," Manny said. "Got delayed, but it was short notice, so I figure beggars can't be choosers."

"Where from?" Max asked.

"L.A.," she said.

"She's an actress," Steve said. That rang a bell. Seemed Larry might have mentioned some actress Jay was dating. Max should have made the connection.

"And sometimes waitress, barista, clerk, whatever," Manny said, downplaying.

"I got a real kick out of that _Jay and Silent Bob Go Canadian, Eh_?" Steve said.

_That's the actual title of a movie?_ Max thought. _That's almost as bad as_ Amazon Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death.

Manny beamed at Steve. Max had an idea that most people would watch a crappy-sounding movie like that just for her.

"When does the other one come out?" Steve asked. "High School—"

"_Musical High_," she corrected. Then, she spelled the title so that they'd get the pun: _Mewesical High, _named after the director, apparently a guy named Mewes. Max would Google the guy later. "It comes out around Christmas, actually, so I figure it has a really good chance of being completely lost in the shuffle. But I had a good time making it."

"That's the most important thing," Steve said. It was easy for him to say. Steve designed videogames and therefore spent all day doing impressive sounding stuff Max would never understand the appeal of, but the kid seemed to really enjoy it. Manny was fascinated by this of course. But, all too soon, she turned to Max and asked what _he_ did.

"I'm a tax attorney," he said.

"Oh?" Manny said, trying to sound interested.

"Wish there was a way to make that sound like fun," Max said, wrinkling his nose. "But it can be. It's a never-ending challenge and you deal with some interesting characters."

"You sound just like Jay," Manny said. "He's always got a story about The Things People Do to Their Cars." Max heard the capital letters in her voice. "It's good to know who he takes after."

"Don't tell _him_ that," Max said. "Or, actually, _tell_ him that. I'd love to see his face." Then he remembered why they were all meeting in the first place and the idea that he might never see his son again hit him hard.

"I'll even take pictures," Manny said. She smiled, but it was clear that she was thinking the same thing.

Max stared at a little heart sticker that someone had put on the counter. No initials, just a little heart. Spinner put his burger down directly over it.

"Here," he said, breaking the tension a little. "Nom Appetit." Max nodded.

Manny stared at her fries, looking puzzled. "You mean, _bon appetit_, Spin?"

"Whatever," Spinner said, gesturing with a spatula.

Max smiled as he shook the ketchup bottle.

"Spin says stuff like that that all the time," Manny explained. "Jay calls him Yogi Berra sometimes."

Steve and Max laughed. Peter said "Who?" Emma rolled her eyes at him. Spinner reached behind him and stole some of Manny's fries. She seemed to have lost interest in them.

"You really should eat, honey," Max said.

"Uh-huh," she said, still not eating. Max thought that somebody needed to say something comforting and wracked his brain for ideas.

"Hey," Spinner said, coming to the rescue. "It's gonna be okay. We'll find him. Or he'll call or show up and we'll kick his ass and everything'll go back to normal. Got it?"

"Uh-huh," she said, unconvinced.

"He's always come back before," Max said.

"What do you mean?" Manny asked.

"He used to take off all the time," Max said. "He'd be gone a couple days, maybe a week. Then he'd show up like nothing happened."

"He used to do that?" she asked. Obviously, he'd never done it to her. On one hand that was a sign of maturity; on the other hand, that meant that this latest disappearance was cause for real alarm.

TBC

A/N 2: Special thanks once again to bsloths for her patience and general beta-ing excellence. I've tinkered a bit since she's seen it, so blame me if something's screwy.


	2. Chapter 2

Every Time Is Like the First

By TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with _Degrassi_ or anything else I reference herein. No profit is being made and no infringement intended. Also, any real location is used fictitiously.

4.

Outside of the deli where she worked, a guy bummed a smoke off of Gabrielle Mejia. He was polite enough, she guessed, offered her a loony for it, but she was a believer in good karma. Someday she'd be in desperate need of a smoke and she hoped that in that case, no one would deprive her of her nicotine.

He was cute, so she tried to talk to him.

"Shit," she said, looking up at the sky. "It's gonna rain isn't it?"

"Prolly," he said.

"You look like you're gonna get caught in it, too," she said. "No umbrella."

"Nope," he said. He shrugged. "It's only water."

"Where you from?"

"Pardon?"

"Cause I'm looking at you, and I can't place it," Gabrielle said. "Like, I'm Dominican. You? I can't figure out. You're not Irish. But with those eyes, I'm guessing Italian?"

"Keep guessing," he said. His eyes were dark blue, very pretty, but the features were hard to place. And Gabrielle was usually good at this type of thing.

"Croatian?" she asked. "Albanian? Russian?"

He took a puff of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke, but otherwise gave no response.

"What's your name?"

"Sorry, babes," he said. "We don't have that kind of relationship. For all I know you could be from the CRA."

"Oh yeah," she said. "We go undercover at delicatessens all the time."

"'Least you admit it," he said, grinning. "Thanks for the smoke though." With that, he walked away.

"Huh," she said. She guessed it was a relatively polite kiss off, but she really needed to find a job that didn't make her smell like garlic.

5.

Unable to wait any longer, though he'd really tried to save what little cash he had, the guy grabbed a couple of hot dogs from a cart. Then he found the mall and made a bee-line for the men's room because he'd found precious few of those while walking around all day. He also knew that he could get a newspaper from one of the kiosks and sit at the food court with it for hours and nobody would bother him. Because the girl at the deli was right; it was going to rain. He hoped to ride some of it out while indoors. That was the one thing that he could do and it gave him a relative sense of accomplishment.

He read some of the paper, in spite of himself, even though it was mostly bad news. He tried to find something lighter like the comics page, but his eyes kept going to the stuff about fires and corner store robberies. Needless to say, he didn't appreciate this, but his feet were killing him so he wasn't about to go get something else to read. And he couldn't sit there and do nothing. Nothing good could come from being left alone with his own thoughts.

He had quite a few of his own problems. For instance, he really didn't know where he was sleeping that night. Nor did he know what would happen when the fifteen bucks and change he had in his pocket was gone. At some point, he was pretty sure he'd had a wallet, maybe even some keys but no longer. But he didn't think about that, because if he did think about it, he'd have to think about everything else and he was not about to do that.

Especially since the couple of hot dogs he'd eaten seemed to be increasingly mad at him. He tried to thwart them with a few minutes of deep breathing and an attempt at prayer, but they still decided they wanted to come back up. He made it back to the men's room and made friends with a toilet in the nearest open stall. He was at the dry heave stage, unsure of how much time had passed, when someone decided to start asking questions. He couldn't walk away this time, because he wasn't sure he could stand up, so this would be really awkward.

"Hey," some dude who worked there said. "You been drinking, guy?"

He groaned, hoping it sounded like enough of a no to satisfy the dude.

"You want me to call somebody?"

As far as he knew, there was nobody to call. He took a couple of deep breaths, flushed the toilet unnecessarily and stood up.

"Nah," he said. "I'm good."

Then he passed out.

He went in and out of consciousness, not really caring that he was being strapped to a gurney and loaded into an ambulance. When he felt a little bit better, he realized that he was hooked to an IV and a nurse was standing over him. She smiled when she caught him looking.

"Feeling kinda miserable aren't you?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"Well, it looks like you had some food poisoning. Not too serious, though. We're doing what we can about that," she said. "I'm Sherry. What's your name?"

Again with that question. Why did people need to know so much? He blinked a couple of times.

"You didn't have any identification on you," she said.

_Yeah no kidding_, he thought. She looked at him closely when he didn't answer her.

"What day is it?" she asked. That, he _could _tell her. He'd read that newspaper, after all.

"How old are you?"

"How old are _you_?" he countered.

"_I'm_ 28," she said. "Your turn."

He tried to think of an answer for her. She must've read him because her next question was "Do you know?"

He looked down at his hands because you were supposed to be able to tell someone's age that way. Not that he had a point of reference. And come to think of it, they used X-rays to figure the age out. So that didn't help at all.

"Sweetie?" she said. "Look up here. You don't know, do you? What about your name? Can't tell me your name?"

"No," he said, not really sure why he thought he'd be able to keep something like that a secret in the first place. He was pretty sure that people in his situation usually got locked up, but he couldn't keep dodging the questions. The questions wore him out.

"Okay," she said.

"_Okay_?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yes," she said. "Now that we know what we're dealing with, we can help. How long have you been walking around like this?"

"I dunno," he said. "Couple days." That was a guess. He really wasn't sure about anything that happened before last night.

"Know where you are now?"

"A hospital, obviously," he said. "Now, _which_ hospital? That's the question…"

"Well, you're at Green River Hospital," she said. She added "In Kitchener," to that when she saw no recognition on his face. Then she couldn't resist adding "Ontario."

"Okay," he said. Meant nothing to him.

"First thing you remember?"

"Walking around." He thought they'd established that.

"Ookaaay. Well, you're here now, and we're gonna see what we can do to help you with this. You with me?" she said.

"I have a choice?"

"Always," she said. "But if you want my opinion, it'd be a good idea to stay here and let us do what we can. I'm gonna get the social worker on duty over here to talk to you, get the search going."

"Okay," he said. It beat the hell out of finding a park bench or something.

"Better than a park bench," was something that he kept repeating over the next couple of days when they did several tests, like MRIs, and PET scans. The aides explained what those were, and for some reason, _that_ stuff rang a bell with him. Now if he could just figure out his name, address, and whether he had a job, he'd be in pretty good shape. Someone or other was searching missing persons to see if someone missed him.

"Maybe you're a student?" Sherry asked, the next time she worked.

"A student?" he asked. Somehow he doubted that. Just a feeling.

"Why not?" she asked. "You're the right age. "You look about twenty-one, twenty-two? Maybe you go to Conestoga."

It didn't sound familiar at all to him.

"Or Waterloo?" She continued. "I could put a word in to have someone check and see if there are any missing students. What do you think?"

He shrugged.

The tests turned up nothing really, no tumors, lesions, or evidence of injury. This was supposed to be good news. It meant that he wasn't dying at least. It just meant that he was crazy, he supposed, something that was confirmed by meetings with several shrinks. Several. Every psychologist, psychiatrist, and social worker seemed to think he was some hot shit. This meant that there always seemed to be someone around to ask him stupid repetitive questions that he still did not know the answer to. He was hypnotized and then given tests—IQ, verbal reasoning, logic, stuff like that. Over the next few days he wondered if he'd really done something horrible in his past life and this never-ending number two pencil high school shit was his own personal hell.

The official diagnosis came back as dissociative fugue, which meant amnesia marked by wandering. This didn't really mean much to him except that the doctors believed that he wasn't making it up. Then there was talk of releasing him to a halfway house nearby and amping up efforts to find out who the hell he was.

"Amping up?" he asked.

"In this case, that would mean going to the press," one of the social workers, Mrs. Kelsey, told him.

"The _what_?" he asked. "Are you kidding me?"

"I sense some reluctance," Mrs. Kelsey deadpanned. He liked her. She was one of the few people he'd dealt with in the last week or so who had a sense of humor.

"Yeah," he said. "Li'l bit."

"Many people in your situation have been identified in this way, you know," she said.

"Mhm," he said. He felt a very strong urge to hide under the bed. He didn't even have a name yet. Officially, he was John Doe, but he and Sherry had spent a little time trying to come up with something better.

"Vladimir?" she suggested, messing with him.

"Bite me," he said.

"Massimo."

"I look even a little Italian to you?"

"Taylor, Tyler, Tucker…" she said. He gave her the stink eye.

"Billy Bob?" she asked.

"How I wish I could forget this conversation."

"Billy Bob it is."

He groaned.

"Why so cranky, Billy Bob?"

"Don't you have like a code of conduct or something that stops you from tormenting the patients?" he asked, unable to stop himself from smiling while he said it.

"I'll keep thinking," she said. "But maybe we won't end up needing one."

"Maybe," he said. Missing persons should have turned something up by this point. It had been more than a week and even his fingerprints hadn't turned up anything.

"Stop worrying Billy Bob," she said. He flipped her off. She was like a particularly evil older sister.

"Okay, seriously…" she said, thinking. "I dunno." She took his face in her hands. "Maybe you look like a Joey,"

"Joe Doe?" he asked.

"Or a Jason, or a Chris, or David, or dare I say, a Bill?"

He shrugged. She flipped a coin and named him Chris. He was okay with it, for now at least.

She'd actually cried the next day when he headed for the halfway house.

It took two days of sitting in his not-too-bad, but still depressing room with no job and little chance of getting one without an identity for him to revisit the going-to-the-press idea. He spoke to the social worker on duty and he set it up. It happened really fast, some woman from the local news sitting down with him and talking to him, and then talking to his doctors.

Then, the next day, she showed up with a camera crew and another woman with stiff hair and a lot of makeup. She, he assumed, was the reporter.

"Hi," she said. "Maria Allende, channel 10. Chris, is it?"

"I guess," he said, shaking her hand. He really didn't feel like a Chris. He should've gone with something else.

"Okay," she said, sizing him up in his donated clothes and floppy hair. "Ready?"

"No," he said.

"Need a minute?"

"Um."

"Need to run and hide someplace?" Maria asked. "I hear that all the time, but I want you to know something, Chris. Okay?"

"Yeah."

"I think somebody's looking for you, and I think that they don't know where to start," she said. "This type of exposure has helped quite a few other people in the past. I think it can help you. Okay?"

He shrugged.

"Now," she said. "You're gonna mostly talk to me; don't even worry about the camera. I'm gonna ask you some questions, all of which I'm sure you're sick of answering, sorry about that, but it'll be over before you know it. And you look great—like a college kid or something. Right out of Central Casting."

He thought he looked homeless, which technically was what he was.

"Somebody misses you," she repeated. "We'll help you find them." She had a transmitter in her ear and at this point someone started using it to talk to her. She poked the thing with her finger and said "okay" a couple of times. "Are we ready?" She turned to him. "Get ready."

He would never be ready.

TBC.


	3. Chapter 3

Every Time Is Like the First

By TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with _Degrassi_ or anything else I reference herein. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.

Chapter Three.

6.

Peter was the first to see the news report. He was sitting in the dining hall, working his way through what passed for breakfast and idly reading the news crawl on one of the TVs bracketed to the wall. He'd gone for ketchup when the news cut to a woman interviewing some poor sap with amnesia. He was picking up salt and pepper and extra napkins when he heard one of those typical voice-over heavy lead ins: "Imagine waking up in a strange city with no ID, no wallet, no cell phone, and no idea who you are. In Kitchener, a young man, known only as Chris, is faced with just that."

Peter rolled his eyes and took a bite of cold, ketchuppy egg substitute, chasing it with some turkey bacon, also cold, and wished they could put on cartoons or _Sabrina the Teenage Witch _reruns or something. _We're college students_, he thought, _we don't wanna watch the news so early in the morning. That's what we have Google for_.

The voice-over was replaced by the actual reporter, speaking directly to the camera, "I'm here with Chris, who wandered Kitchener for days until a bout of _food poisoning_ brought him to a local hospital, where, when he came to, he was unable to tell anyone his name, his age, or anything about his medical history."

Peter groaned. Now they were gonna put the poor schmuck on TV. He went back to his eggs.

"First of all," the reporter said. "Is Chris your real name?"

"Um," the guy said. The "um" was enough to make Peter look up and stop chewing.

"We just came up with the name in the hospital," _Jay Freakin Hogart_ said. "I got a little bit sick of being John Doe, so this nurse—Sherry, came up with Chris."

Peter stopped listening, swallowed the lump of cold egg product with difficulty, dug his cell out of his pocket and dialed Spinner's cell. When he got no answer, he dialed the landline.

Emma picked up.

"Hello?"

"Put on the news," Peter said. "Channel Ten."

"What?"

"Channel Ten!"

"Okay! Okay!" she said. "Wanna tell me what this is—"

"You missed it," Peter broke in. "It's about Jay."

"Oh my God."

"No, he's okay," Peter explained. "_Sorta_." He told her what he'd heard, and that a number had flashed across the screen but that he couldn't find a pen.

"But they'll probably show it again," Peter said. "Or maybe it's on the website. Should I go look it up?"

"I'll do it," she said. "You have class, right?"

"Uh, yeah, and so do you," Peter said. He had a class in ten minutes. They had a class _together_ in a couple of hours.

"Yeah," she said. "_That's_ fucked. Take good notes for me?" That might've been a joke. At least Peter hoped it was and not just because he usually borrowed _her_ notes.

"Ummkay," he said. "You sure you guys are gonna be all right?"

"Oh yeah," Emma lied. "I just gotta go wake Manny up now."

7.

Emma took Manny's phone away and put her own on silent. Both of their phones and the landline had been buzzing and ringing all morning. Emma spent a good bit of time imagining the things that she could do to them, most of the fantasies involving blow torches, ball peen hammers, or some combination of the two. It seemed like everyone they'd ever met had called today, including several people they didn't want to hear from.

Craig Manning, for example had left a long-winded, stammering message on Manny's cell, wanting to know if she was okay. He'd seen the news report and wanted to know if there was anything _he _could do. Emma wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he had Manny's best interests at heart. For once. But it would have been easier to do if she'd never met him, or perhaps (and this was a horrible thought) if she'd had some memory loss of her own. In the end, with Manny's blessing, she sent him a polite-ish text, saying that they were okay, and there was no need to do anything. If he was smart, he'd take that as the buzz off it was meant to be because the last thing anyone needed was a doorstep full of Craig right now.

Manny, meanwhile, stationed herself in front of her laptop, watching the news video over and over again.

"Okay, okay," Manny said when she caught Emma staring. "I'm stopping." But she bookmarked it for later.

"Good," Emma said. "Have some eggs."

Manny got up from the couch, joints popping, and headed to the kitchen counter.

"Oh wait," Emma said. "They might be cold."

"Don't care," Manny said, enthusiastically spooning some eggs onto a plate and acting a bit more like herself. She took a bite and gave a little happy moan.

"So, you and Spin," Manny began. "Is it an open marriage, 'cuz these eggs deserve a little reward if you know what I'm saying."

"Heh," Emma said. "Dream on."

"Worth a shot," Manny said, with her mouth full. "Is there coffee?"

_ThankYouGod_, Emma thought. Manny had been starting to worry her. It was that not-eating thing. Emma was the one with the nervous stomach; Manny was a comfort food kind of girl, but she'd barely eaten in days. The last thing Emma had seen the girl actually enjoy were those fries she had the night they all met Jay's family and the conversation started with where Jay could have gone and quickly degenerated to when they might find the body if worse came to worse. Then, in trying to lighten the mood, Jay's dad, Max, started telling embarrassing Jay stories about stuff like Halloween costumes and music lessons and hinted at the existence of pictures he could show when this was all over. Then Emma realized that he was using the past tense a couple too many times for anyone's liking, like he wanted to prepare himself for the inevitable.

"Piano lessons, huh?" Manny said. "I'm so making him play me something if…"

"When," Spinner corrected.

"Yeah," Manny said. "_When_ he…when we see him…"

After that, no amount of French fries and chocolate could salvage the mood. At one point, Peter got up and asked Spinner if he still needed to stick around. He had a morning class, he said, but he'd hang out if Spinner needed him to.

"Naw," Spinner said. "Do homework. Get some sleep. All that stuff."

"Okay," Peter whispered.

"Why are you whispering?" Emma asked.

"What?" Peter said, only slightly louder. "Wow. I dunno." Then he started saying goodbyes and nice to have met yous in a more normal tone of voice, which made everyone look up in surprise. That was when Emma realized that they'd _all_ been whispering, like they were at a wake or something.

It was amazing how fast everyone had given Jay up for dead. Then again, when she considered the type of people he used to hang out with, Emma could easily imagine him pissing one of them off or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time and—

But none of that mattered anymore. Now all they had to do was get him home.

Emma watched Manny devour her fridge-dump omelet. Spin had called Max a couple of hours before, and in turn, Max was supposed to call them when he was ready to leave for Kitchener which meant that Emma had less than an hour to get Manny showered and changed before he came to pick her up.

8.

The halfway house where they'd put Jay could've been worse. Max even thought it was kinda nice looking or at least it would be, if he didn't know that it was a halfway house. Here he was, standing in front of a place that was probably a godsend to many people, his only son included, and he was thinking bad thoughts about it.

"This is nice," Manny said, reminding him that she was there.

"Mhm."

"I like these sunflowers," she said, nodding toward several tall, but past their prime blooms that lined the fence, dropping on their stems. She reached out to touch one. "Looks like the birds like em too." Most of the seeds were missing, pried out by who knew how many beaks.

He felt almost guilty for thinking negative thoughts while standing next to a girl who seemed so happy to see a bunch of big, garish weeds. _Maybe Jay was right all these years_, he thought. _I really am an asshole. _

But, asshole or no, he found it exceedingly difficult to walk up the perfectly nice flagstone path to the perfectly nice front door. Manny, from the looks of her, didn't much like it either, squaring her shoulders and taking a deep breath before clickety clacking across the path herself.

He rang the bell, and a youngish man opened the door. He didn't look too much older than Jay, but he was wearing a blindingly white shirt and a black skinny tie. Max, after the last couple days spent around college aged kids, was not used to the absence of scruff. It was jarring.

"You wouldn't happen to be Mr. Hogart, would you?"

"Max," he said. "And this is Manny…uh…Santos?"

"Santos," she agreed, waving awkwardly.

"Nice to meet you," he said. "I'm Brian Singh. I spoke to you on the phone." He beckoned both to come in.

"So," Brian chirped as he led them through the hallway. "I've gotten to know Jason a little bit in the last few days, though we all got to know him as Chris at first. I keep slipping up and calling him by the wrong name, but he's been pretty cool about it."

Manny gave a little tight smile. Max, for one, could not imagine his son (or anyone really) being cool about any of this.

"He's excited to see the both of you."

"Has he remembered anything?" Manny wanted to know.

"Not yet," Brian said, head cocked to one side, in an apologetic "Sorry, we're out of Sweet n Low" sort of way.

_I guess that explains why he wants to see me_, Max thought. Brian put the two of them on an abstract patterned couch and sat on the matching loveseat opposite.

He quickly reviewed what was going to happen next. Jay would be brought in. They'd get reacquainted, but then there was a lot of talk of paperwork and various doctor appointments they needed to set up. Max and Manny nodded in all the right places, but Max suspected that the girl wasn't listening any more than he was.

When Brian finally left, Manny took another really deep breath. Max, though he'd quit smoking five years before, wondered if he could bum a smoke and run off for a quick puff before he had to face his son. Or a drink. A drink would be nice.

Manny surreptitiously checked her breath.

"So," Brian chirped. "Here we are."

Jay was little more than a set of darting eyes, staring from Max to Manny, then to the floor and back again. Max tried to think of the last time he'd seen this look, this naked fear, on his son's face. The day of the shooting at Degrassi had come close, except that Jay'd been much better at hiding what he was thinking back then. Still, Max had seen Jay's hands shake as he smoked in the back yard, sitting on the edge of his mother's old chaise. That day, Max had wanted to grab the kid and just hold him for a while, the way he was sure many parents had done, but in the end all he had done was not give him a hard time for smoking.

And grabbing him now would probably only set off a panic attack.

Brian was very professional, acting like it wasn't at all unusual to have to formally introduce someone to his own father and girlfriend. Jay stared at both of them hard, like he was afraid he'd be tested on their names later. He put out one hand looking like he might want to shake, but the awkwardness was just too much, and after a feeble wave, he folded his arms across his chest.

"Um," Jay said. "Hi?"

Undemonstrative as usual, and kicking himself for it, Max returned the "hi."

Manny proceeded to say more things in one breath than Max would ever have thought possible: she was happy to see him; a great many people had been worried about him; he should never ever EVER scare her like that again, etc.

The three men in the room just stared at her, dumbfounded.

"I…won't?" Jay said. The old Jay would have said something about having forgotten his Hummingbird to English dictionary and could she _please_ slow down?

"I'm sorry," Manny said, breathlessly. "Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Forget all that. Just…let's sit down. Relax a second. Let me look at you." She kept reaching out to touch him and stopping herself at the last second. "On second thought, why don't you talk to your dad for a second while I go into the corner and try to be less crazy?"

"The bathroom's down the hall to your left," Brian told her.

"Thanks," she said, scurrying off. Jay continued to stare after her.

"She might be a couple minutes," Brian said. "So? Max, why don't you and Jason talk for a minute?"

"Is she okay?" Jay asked.

"Yeah."

"Oh yeah," Max said. "It's just been a rough few days, is all."

"I'm s—" Jay began, stopping himself, rolling his eyes a little.

_Dammit_, Max thought. Leave it to him to say something stupid.

Brian piped up, in sort of a teasing way, "What'd I tell you about the apologizing, Jay? You didn't do anything wrong. You haven't had the best couple weeks either, ya know." Jay shrugged. A silence fell. Brian had said not to bombard the kid with information, to let him ask about whatever he wanted to know, but Jay didn't seem to want to make the first move.

"So," Max said. "How's the food? Did you eat breakfast?"

"It's good," Jay said. "I just had some coffee. I wasn't really hungry."

_Well,_ Max thought, as another silence fell. He didn't think his son had ever been so quiet. _So much for small talk_. Maybe it was best to cut to the chase. "Anything you wanna talk about?"

"Um," Jay said immediately, which meant something was coming at least. "So…you're my Dad." Max nodded, irrationally encouraged that he said _Dad_ and not _Father_. "Is there a Mom?"

"She," Max began, then sucked a Mannyesque amount of oxygen into his lungs to steel himself for this. Because he just _couldn't_ lie to the kid, as much as he wanted to. "She passed, son."

"_Passed_?" Jay said, cocking his head and squinting at Max. _That_ was Jay-esque of him.

"Yeah," Max said. "Poor choice of words. She _died_. You were ten."

"How?"

"Jay…" Whether or not Max wanted to tell his son the truth, he knew that it was most certainly not a good idea to be telling him _this_.

"_How_."

"It was a carjacking," Max explained. Brian winced. Manny, who was just coming back into the room, winced. "She was shot by someone who wanted to steal her car." He left out the part about being on her way to pick Jay up from school and how the boy had had to be picked up by his best friend's mother, nobody telling him what had happened for several hours. That, if Max were being honest, had been the first nail in the coffin of their relationship. So perhaps the boy didn't need to know _every_ detail just yet.

Jay was stone-faced. He'd reacted more or less the same way when he'd been told the first time. At ten, he'd been calm for several minutes before exploding all over the place. This is what Max braced for now. It had been so beyond horrific and now the kid got to relive it like it was the first time.

"Oh my God," Manny said softly. She looked over at Max unbelievingly, then crossed the room and sat next to her boyfriend. Then, forgetting that she wasn't supposed to touch him unless he gave her the okay, brushed his hair back from his forehead, then let her hand rest on his cheek, so that he turned to her.

"Baby," she said. He let her hug him, his arms even closing around her, but while she was tearing up again, _his_ eyes showed absolutely nothing.

"You don't have a picture do you?" he asked Max.

"Yeah," Max said, pulling a small one out of his wallet and handing it over. In it his first wife, Jay's mother, Karen, grinned devilishly up at the camera, three year old Jay on her hip. It wasn't hard to tell who Jay had always taken after. "You can keep that one. I'm sure you have a couple at your place, but there are a lot and you're welcome to any of them as long as you leave a few for me…" he babbled.

"I," Jay said. Manny, who'd been staring at the photo, snapped her head back up to look at him, expectantly. "I…um" He stared at the picture for quite a while.

"Look at you," Manny said. She pointed at the photo with one shiny black fingernail, a little half smile on her face. "Your face is almost the same!"

"Huh," he said, continuing to stare at the picture, almost unblinkingly. Then he handed it back to Max.

"I'm sorry," Jay said, flatly. "I got nothing. I don't know what the hell's the matter with me…" He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"You gotta give it time," Brian said.

"It's okay, babe," Manny said. Max, of course, said nothing, stood there looking stupid.

"You can't expect to control the way you feel—" Brian began.

"Really?" Jay asked. "I mean, I'm pretty sure I never got a psychology degree or anything, but I don't think this is a good sign, do you?"

"Boo," Manny said. "You don't remember right now, and that sucks, but not remembering is not your fault and it doesn't say anything about you except that you just don't remember. Okay? _I _know you."

Jay looked at her, saying nothing.

"I _know_ you," Manny repeated. "You're a good person. And you don't always like to admit it, but you care a lot about people, and I know that you loved your mother so much that it really hurt to talk about her. The few times you did, though, it was obvious. So don't worry about the kind of person you are, okay? Because _we know you_." The whole time she talked, she ran her hand up and down his back, which seemed, at the very least, to calm him enough for him to continue talking. For a second, Max had this irrational fear that Jay had been about to clam right up.

There the girl was, saying nice things and Jay could only react by dipping his head and avoiding eye contact. _That's my boy_, Max thought. _And here __I__ was, thinking he took after Karen. Poor kid._

"So," Jay said after another agonizing pause. "Where do I _live_?" Jay asked. "Do I have a job? Or, actually, _did_ I have a job, cause I'm pretty sure I don't have one now. Which means that I probably won't have a place to live for long…and…and…I dunno. What else?"

"Toronto," Manny began. "You're a mechanic, and your boss is just as worried about you as everyone else is." Jay raised an eyebrow at this, but let it go.

"Mechanic?" he asked.

"Yep," she said. "A friggin miracle worker, actually. And let me tell you, I know this from experience."

He chewed this over for a minute.

"I don't know anything about cars," he said.

"One thing at a time," Brian butted in. "We talked about this. You think you can remember _that_ part?"

"Yeah, whatever," Jay said, rolling his eyes and seeming altogether more Jay-ish than he had since they'd gotten there. This made Max bite his lip and Brian smile openly.

"That's more like it," Brian said.

"Should we probably be getting the hell outta here or what?" Jay asked.

"There's no timeframe," Brian said. "Whenever you're ready, you're ready."

"_Ready_?"

"You know what I mean," Brian said. "I'm not about to hurry you out the door. But I'll tell you what: as much as I like you, Dude? I want nothing more than to see you walking out this door _toute de suite_."

"Hells yeah," Manny said, raising her small fist for Brian to bump. He hesitated, but obliged. Jay looked at the two of them and couldn't help but smile a little.

"Did you just say 'Dude?'" Jay asked.

"Yes," Brian deadpanned. "Yes, I did."

"Amazing," Jay said, shaking his head. Max thought that any other guy would have happily flipped Jay off for this, but Brian looked like his middle finger might fall off if he raised it up by itself. Max pegged the guy as the type who said things like "H-E-double-hockeysticks" in earnest.

"Ready to get going?" Manny asked.

"Um," Jay said. "Yeah. I should go get…actually, none of it's really mine."

"It's _yours_," Brian said, as he headed down the hall to the office for their paperwork. "You know it is. So stop standing on ceremony and take it."

"Good enough for me," Manny said. "Which room's yours?" Max supposed they all needed someone to take charge and it was a good thing that Manny was up to the challenge.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

Every Time Is Like the First

By TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with _Degrassi_ or anything else I reference herein. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.

Chapter Four.

9.

The question of whether or not to trust these random people had entered Jay's mind. Logic dictated that they could be anybody. They could be serial killers, or members of some cult that he had just barely escaped before losing his mind. _Or_ they could be his family, like they said. They'd proven themselves enough to satisfy all the social workers; he would remind himself of this over and over in the next few hours. They'd brought paperwork. His father had his S.I.N number and birth certificate and an old passport, plus all kinds of pictures of him. There were elementary school pictures with god-awful haircuts and stripey shirts, not to mention that one of him and his mother that had not rung even the slightest bell, and one or two that looked like they might have been from high school. Then there were more recent-looking ones of him, alone and with various friends, including Manny, who also proved that she knew all about his tattoos.

But even in his confused state, Jay still figured that the social workers had bigger fish to fry than him, which meant that they probably would have dumped him off to any willing passerby. In the end, he decided that there was nothing to lose by meeting them at least.

Then, within ten seconds of meeting them, he was sure he was going with them. Actually, he realized that he'd go with anyone who'd have him; it was better than being alone.

"Jay," Manny said, poking him.

"Sorry, what?" he said. At least he'd been legitimately daydreaming that time, looking out the car window as they went down the highway, wondering if he'd seen any of it before. The last time she'd called his name, he'd had to remind himself that she was talking to _him_.

"When's the last time you ate?"

"I dunno," he said. "Had coffee."

"When was that?

"Seven?"

"Poor baby! You must be dying," she said. "Me too. But we're gonna be home soon. I say we order in as soon as we get there. What do you think?"

"I'm not picky," Jay said. From the backseat, she reached over and rubbed his arm. It seemed like she'd done a lot of touching in the hour or so since he'd met her. Or re-met her. He didn't mind. Also, she'd said that _we_ were going to be _home_ soon.

Hearing the word home and having no mental picture to go with it sucked, but he couldn't help but be glad that there would be one to go to, for the moment at least. He had a million questions, each one weirder than the last, but he was terrified to ask any of them.

Manny had said that he was a mechanic. As his father drove them, Jay stared out the window and tried desperately to remember something about cars. He tried to picture the inner workings of this thing his father drove. It was an altogether boring thing, Jay knew that much, and its stereo was for _shit_, but other than that, if it broke down right then, they were screwed. He wasn't even sure he could pump gas or figure out how to change a tire.

"Almost there," Jay's father said. He hadn't said much during the drive and put the radio on when the silence got to be too much for everyone. After a little while, to Jay's relief, Manny stopped trying to get him to talk and started to sing along to the radio.

_Shit,_ he thought. The good thing about riding shotgun was not being able to stare at her. Not that he didn't want to stare at her, he just worried that her tolerance for strangeness only went so far and that he would be hitting the limit any time now. He just wished he knew more about her. Aside from her name, he drew a blank._ Except that she's…_he searched for a good word to use as he listened to her sing and saw her bounce around from the corner of his eye_. Cute? _But cute didn't cover it. Out of his league didn't cover it either. And she was most certainly out of his league; his instinct told him that much.

His father pulled into a parking spot in front of a laundromat and killed the engine, leaving them all in silence. Jay struggled to say something. Anything at all.

"What's the name of that song?"He asked, finally.

"Crap," Manny said. "I dunno. 'Close the Window' or something like that…"

"It's called 'We're All Alone,'" his father piped up. "And it's older than the both of you. _I_ was a kid when it came out. How do you even know it?"

"_The Muppet Show_," Manny said. At the word "Muppet," Jay immediately got the mental image of a bunch of puppets, including a frog in a trench coat and a pig who wore long silk gloves and matching eye makeup. Random stuff like that had been popping into his head for days, but to date, he had not remembered anything useful. He tried not to let it bother him much, for a change. Instead he busied himself by wondering how Manny would react if he asked her to sing that song again.

Manny opened the car door and hopped out. Jay did the same, hoisting the little duffel bag they'd given him at the halfway house onto his shoulder and looking around at the assorted little buildings, scanning the signs on the little storefronts. _Compramos Oro!/Nou Acheter de l'or!/We Buy Gold!_ one said. _Hair Innovations_ said another, with _Maritza is back!_ in the window.

"Ready?" Manny asked.

"Uh-huh," Jay lied. His father looked around at the little stores and the beat up little buildings and double checked the locks on his car. _Like anyone would steal that thing_, Jay thought, and then he wondered where the thought came from, why he was suddenly so _irritated_. It beat being scared though.

"Come on," Manny sing-songed, grabbing his hand and leading him down the block. His father followed close behind them, like he was afraid of being murdered or something. The neighborhood didn't look _that_ bad for fuck's sake.

"You okay, Boo?" Manny asked.

"Hmm?"Jay asked. "Yeah." _Boo?_ He thought.

"You sure?" He nodded, still looking around. At the end of the block, she led him up some steps and opened a door, letting him and his father in before she pulled a truly massive keychain from her bag. He couldn't tell if there were more keys or more keychains on it.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said as she finally found the right key and let them all in, leading them up some narrow stairs to a metal door, hip-bumping it open and entering, flicking the lights.

Jay could see most of the apartment from the doorway.

"Jay,"

"Yeah?"

"You coming in?" Manny asked.

"Yeah," he said. He looked around, with the bag still on his shoulder until Manny took it from him and put it down.

"Take your jacket off. Stay a while," she chirped. "So. This is _le grand foyer_. Coincidentally, it's also the living room. And dining room."

"And the bedroom?" Jay predicted.

"Actually no," she said. "That's down the hall a piece, past the kitchen." She beckoned him to follow her as she showed him the tiny bedroom and bath. His father decided to stay in the everything else room.

"Ta-da!" she said, spreading her arms in the narrow doorway so that they bumped against the walls. He couldn't help but laugh at her.

"_Finally_!" she said. "Didn't know _what_ I was gonna have to do to even get you to _smile_."

He smiled a little wider, still not knowing what to make of her.

"Glad I didn't have to pull out the knock-knock jokes," she said.

"Me too," he said.

Manny let Jay look around, picking up a remote control here, a DVD there, until he picked up a bracelet on his dresser and looked at Manny questioningly.

"Yeah," she said. "That one's mine."

"Do you," he began. "Um."

"Hmm?"

"Um," he said, crinkling his forehead. He scratched the back of his head. "Leave stuff here a lot?" he finished lamely.

She smiled. "Once in a while, yeah," she said. "When I'm in town."

"You don't live here?" Jay asked. "I mean…"

"I do, sort of," she explained. "Half the time I'm here, and half the time I'm in Los Angeles."

He was no less puzzled or disappointed. Even though she had a set of keys, there clearly wasn't enough of her stuff lying around to make him think that she lived with him in this little shoebox of an apartment, but to hear that she lived thousands of miles away did not make him happy. He'd just been starting to get used to her.

"But I'm gonna be staying here a while," she said.

"Why?"

"_Why_?" she asked. "Why do you think? I'm not letting you out of my sight, Cuckoo bananas."

"But what're you do—" he began, and then he paused. "_Cuckoo bananas_?"

She smiled, a little guiltily, he thought, and started biting on a thumbnail.

"Did you _really_ just say that?" he asked.

"If the wacky feathers fit," she said, shrugging. "So? You were saying?"

"What _was_ I saying?" he asked. "Cuckoo bananas," he mused. "Is that, like, a Manny-ism? You say it all the time?"

"Maybe."

He shook his head, grinning a little.

What the hell was I gonna say?" he wondered aloud. He looked around the room for something to remind him of what he'd been thinking. "Oh yeah. L.A. What's in L.A.?" he asked.

"Um," Manny began.

"Are you in school or—?"

"I'm an actress," she said. "And sometimes a dogwalker, barista, and a whole bunch of other stuff." She waved a hand dismissively.

"An actress?"

"Yeah," she said. "Don't get me wrong, I do a good amount of waiting tables and walking dogs, but I've actually had a pretty good year. Did a couple of commercials, one cop show, and I just finished a movie."

"Oh," he said. "Wow." This did not really seem like the type of person who needed to be spending time babysitting _him_.

How long would it be before she had to get back? That was the question. When he asked, she waved a hand and told him not to worry about it.

"The…um…dogs won't miss you?"

"The dogs will muddle through without me," she said. "You wouldn't _believe_ the competition for dogwalkers in that town." She grinned at him again, probably hoping he'd grin back, but he wasn't having it.

"What about the other stuff?"

"Well," she said, "Let's not stress about the other stuff for now. All's cool."

"But," he said. "I mean, if I'm keeping you from—"

"You're _not_." she said.

"But don't you have to go back eventually?"

"Maybe," she said. "_Eventually_. But that's an issue for another day. Right now, we don't even know what we're having for dinner."

"Manny," he said.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "I mean it. You're gonna be so sick of me." He smiled again, uncertainly. He tried to fight it, but she was too cute not to smile at. Even though he was sure that anyone with the sense that God gave a flattened roadside squirrel would be on their guard.

"Okay?" she prodded.

"Okay," he said. _So I don't have the sense of a dead squirrel. Guess that's good to know. This time tomorrow, she could be looking for places to dispose of my body. _

"Now, about dinner," she began.

"I was just about to ask about that," said Jay's father, from the door, making them both jump like they'd been caught doing something wrong.

"Ooh," he said. "Déjà vu. You were about sixteen the last time I caught you with a girl in your room."

Manny giggled.

"Ha-ha," Jay said, because it seemed like he needed to say something. Manny went off to find takeout menus and came back with a thick stack which she fanned out like cards.

"Why do I get the feeling that neither of you cook?" Jay's father said.

"Why, whatever would give you that idea?" Manny asked, fanning herself with the papers. She held them out to Jay. "You pick," she said. He reached out and pulled a menu out of her fist.

"Chinese?" she asked, making a face. So she wasn't in the mood for Chinese. He grinned and tossed it over his shoulder, making it disappear. _This is flirting_, _what you're doing right now,_ he thought.

"Italian?" he asked, pulling out a red, white, and green pamphlet. "Is that _okay_?" he asked, teasing a little.

"It's completely up to you," she said, innocently.

"Talk about déjà vu," Jay's father said, shaking his head. "Every woman I have ever known has done that," he said, shaking his head and walking away.

"Sexist," Manny joked.

"Just an observation," he shot back.

"Just for that, you're paying!" she said.

"Like I wasn't already paying," he said, pausing outside the door. "So what's it gonna be? Pizza? Pasta? Heroes?"

"Yes," Manny deadpanned. "Especially since it's on you."

Once they settled on pizza (one pepperoni, one olive), Jay's father went off to call for delivery, leaving Jay and Manny alone again.

"Of course, he's paying," Manny joked once the older man was gone. "What do you have parents for?" Jay smiled uncertainly again.

"I heard that," Jay's father said. Jay wondered if he was "Dad," "Father," "Pop" or what? He'd called the man Dad before, but it felt weird.

"What's the matter?" she asked. He shrugged, shaking his head. "Come on, what are you thinking?"

"Nothing," he said. "I don't have thought _one._ Put your ear to my head, you can hear the ocean."

"Yeah," Manny said. "Bullshit. I know you too well."

"That makes one of us," he said.

She smiled. "Was that so hard?"

"Huh?"

"'That makes one of us'" she mimicked. "You just said what's on your mind. I just realized that you seemed okay with doing that before, but then you stopped, and started smiling at my lame jokes and shit, but now you're over that, so what else ya got?"

"I—" he began, but then stopped.

"Don't think," she said. "Just talk."

"What?"

"Come on," she said. "First thing that pops into your head. Go."

He stared at her.

"Not very good at this, are you?" she asked.

"Are you kidding me?"

"Not even a little," she said. "Keep going."

"Who _are_ you?" he asked. "Do you always do stuff like this or is it a new thing?"

"Actually," she said. "It's a _you_ thing."

"Say what?"

"You do it to me," she said. "Because sometimes I overthink, especially when an audition's coming up. You're the one who grabs the script out of my hand and goes 'you've read that thing twenty five times, Manny. All you need to know is right on the damn page, so stop worrying about it and eat your burger before I do.'"

"So then, I'm an asshole," he said.

"No, Jay, you're not an asshole," she said. "No matter what I've said to you in the past."

"Hey!" he said, grinning in disbelief.

"Because you usually say what I need to hear," she said. "I thought it might work with you, but I guess it's back to the drawing board."

"I guess I'll let you know if I think of anything," he said.

"You have enough to think about," she said. "All the squiggles are out on your forehead. You should try to relax."

"Ha," he deadpanned. "You're funny."

"I know, I know, it's really hard, but try anyway," she said. "You're safe now, okay?"

He nodded, more to make her happy than anything else. It was funny how much he wanted to make her happy already.

"I want you to know something," she said. "You listening?"

He nodded.

"The whole time you were missing, it—um—a lot of people were worried," she said. "Your dad, your uncles, _my_ folks. Spinner—you'll meet him soon, I guess, as soon as you're ready. He was terrified. And Emma, and Peter, and I know these names mean nothing, right?" He nodded.

"But trust me for now," she continued. "You're not alone. A lot of people are looking out for you. Maybe I can dig up some pictures after we eat if you want. Am I rambling?"

"Is that the guy's actual name?" Jay asked. "Spinner?" Manny laughed.

"It's Gavin, actually. He goes by Spinner because, I guess, he used to be a little hyperactive."

"And what about you?"

"Manuela," she said. "And I might be a little bit hyper, too."

"You? Nawww," he said.

"Ha-ha," she said.

"Manuela," he mused.

"Mmhmmm."

After another silence, she turned to him. "This is _your_ bed, you know."

"Yep."

"And it doesn't bite," she said. "Why don't you relax a little?" He was perched on the edge.

"You can even do this!" she said, bouncing slightly, making him smile again.

"But only if you _really_ wanna get wild," she teased.

"Wild," he said. "That's me." He'd meant to sound sarcastic, but she smiled.

"You've had your moments," she replied.

"Yeah?"

"Yep," she said, thinking about something or other.

"You gonna keep me in suspense here?"

"I'm just trying to narrow down an example," she said. "Um…um…okay. You talked your way into the office of the Dean of Drama at Smithdale to get her to let me re-audition after I'd blown my first chance. You told her you were my agent."

"Smithdale?"

"Yeah. Smithdale University," she said. "It's a couple hours north of here. I lasted almost a whole semester there before I left."

"Why'd you leave?"

"That's another story," she said. "The short version is that I had a shot at a part in a movie in L.A."

"And the long version?"

"Later," she said, leaning in to whisper. "After your Dad leaves, I will tell you the story. We'll have sort of a Scheherazade thing going on."

He must have looked more confused than usual, because she explained:

"It's a story. Scheherazade is this girl who marries a king. Sounds cool, right? But this king is known for marrying women and then chopping their heads off, like, that night. It's like a quirk of his. So he's just a total catch, right? Everyone can see that he goes through wives like toilet paper, but he's the king. What can they do? She goes ahead with the wedding. She has a plan, don'tcha know? On their wedding night, she starts telling him this story and it's awesome, but once she's got him good and sucked in, she stops and says 'I'll tell you the rest later.' So he can't kill her because he just _has_ to hear the end of this story, and then there's another story, and another, every night, until years pass, and he forgets to kill her and they live happily ever after or whatever."

He considered this. "You're fucking with me," he said, finally.

"Nope," she said. "I didn't make it up. You can totally find it on the internet. It's a famous old story. Dunno if you'd call it a fairytale, exactly, but…"

"Do people tell this to _kids_?"

"Probably," she said. "So we can be like that, except you know, without all the beheading."

Something about the offhand way she'd said that got him laughing again.

TBC

A/N: Jay has a bit of a pessimistic attitude toward social workers, I think...his opinions do not reflect mine. Just making sure I put that out there. :)


	5. Chapter 5

Every Time Is Like the First

By TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with _Degrassi_ or anything else I reference herein. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.

Chapter Five.

10.

Jay was over-stimulated. Manny knew the signs from all the time she and Emma had spent babysitting Emma's little brother Jack. He sat at the little table with her, Max, and an empty pizza box trying to absorb whatever information they threw his way. He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands as she stifled a yawn and Max shook his head at both of them.

When Jay looked up again, Max looked at his watch and said, "I'd better head out."

"What time is it?" Jay asked, squinting at a clock on the wall.

"It's almost one o'clock," Max said. "I have a meeting at 9:30 that I can't miss." Jay nodded.

"If you need anything after that, call me," Max said. "I can probably take off at around 11:30 or 12:00 if you want."

"I was thinking," Manny began. "That we'd just relax, see some people, but how bout we meet for dinner? What do you think, Jay?"

"Sure," Jay said, sounding like he was too tired to know what he was agreeing to.

"Sounds like a plan," Max said. Before he left, he clasped Manny's hand and patted Jay's shoulder, the most affection he'd shown since she met him. Anyone could see that he'd wanted to do more, though. Someday, he'd get it together, Manny decided. Of course, if he didn't do it on his own, she'd be happy to push him along.

"Are you staying?" Jay asked, once his father left.

"Yeah," Manny said. "I figured you probably didn't want to be alone."

He nodded, which was good, because she had no intention of going anywhere.

"I just might need your help pulling out the sofa bed," she said. What she really wanted was to climb into bed with him, if only so that she could keep him within reach and be nearby if he needed her. But getting too close so soon would probably creep him out. That made the pullout the best thing for her.

He helped her pull the bed out and looked dubiously at the thin mattress, bouncing his knee on one corner and listening to the creaking sound it made.

"Maybe you should take the bed," he said.

"No," she said. "It's your bed and you're staying in it. The sooner you get used to your apartment, the better."

"But, this thing," he said. "Were you there when I bought it?"

"Nope," she said. "The foldout definitely predates me, but it's not that bad." She said that with what sounded like perfect confidence, but the truth was she'd never slept on the foldout before. Sean had and Spinner had, but she'd never thought to ask them. And she doubted that he'd bought it anywhere, unless it had been a garage sale. More likely, he found it on the sidewalk on trash day. To prove it was okay, though, she climbed onto the bare mattress, lying on her stomach, feet in the air. It smelled like cigarettes, and maybe a little spilled beer, but it could have been far worse. He sat down next to her, then lay back, testing it for himself.

"See?" she asked.

"Eh," he said. "Here's the pole, right in the middle of my back."

"No big," Manny said. "Because I'm not gonna lie across it like this, so it won't be an issue."

"Then I guess we should see if I have some sheets for it," he said, getting up. They started to make the bed but the elastic was dead on the sheet so it kept popping off the corners until they gave up and found themselves lying across it again without fitting the thing in place.

"So," he said. "About that story you said you'd tell me…"

She started talking, telling him about the trip to LA, but it seemed like the story grew tentacles and went in twenty different directions. She told him all about Studz and how he'd ended up playing chaperone, making sure that Peter didn't sneak out of the guys' crappy hotel room to climb into bed with Mia in the equally crappy girls' hotel room.

"That was his girlfriend at the time," Manny explained. "She tagged along and neither of them would leave room for the Holy Ghost if you know what I mean."

Somehow she ended up telling him about Paige and what happened to her at the movie premiere.

"You're fucking with me." It was fast becoming his new catchphrase. Manny figured she'd be hearing a lot of it in the weeks to come.

"Nuh-uh," she said. "You can Google it. She wanted to do the quick flash thing, but she fell and broke her leg. Her skirt flew up."

He shook his head in disbelief.

"Meanwhile flashes went off left and right. And you had to ask five people to tell you what the cross streets were so you could tell the dispatcher where to send the ambulance. I am _not_ making this up."

"Okay."

"You totally don't believe me!"

"I didn't say that."

"I'll prove it," she said, getting off the sofa bed with a creak and pulling her laptop out of her bag. A couple of searches and a Facerange page or two later, he shook his head.

"Damn," he said.

"Told you," she said. She pulled up photos and explained who was who, hoping that might jog his memory. It didn't work. He was attentive and managed to keep the names straight, but remembered nothing about any of them.

"Meh," she said. "Doesn't matter."

He snorted. Of _course_ it mattered, the snort said. She put the laptop on an endtable and stretched out, trying to think of what to say to make him feel better. Everything she came up with sounded stupid in her head.

"Jay," she began.

"I know," he said.

She started to push his bangs off his forehead, but it seemed like too much of a Mommy gesture, so she stopped herself.

"So tell me a little more about some of these people," he said, trying to lighten things up. She came up with a couple of quick Spinner and Emma stories and got him laughing, but somehow in the middle of all of this, they both fell asleep.

By the looks of the sunlight coming through the blinds she woke up late the next morning. Jay slept beside her. _Guess he was right about that pole_, she thought, wedging her hand under her lower back. Then she looked over at him and it hit her.

She was _not_ supposed to be in bed with him. Okay, she was fully clothed and so was he, but still.

But she'd missed him so much.

But she was supposed to be giving him space, so that he could reacclimatize himself or whatever.

Even with all the guilt and the ache that the pole gave her, she didn't want to move from that spot, and if she hadn't needed to go to the bathroom, she wouldn't have. She slithered off the bed reluctantly, taking care not to disturb him. Not that he was the lightest sleeper. He was on his stomach, face half buried in a pillow. What face she could see was scruffy, puffy eyed and, well, cute. He had the kind of blotto sleepy face that begged to be photographed. Or drawn on. She resisted the urge to smooth his hair out of his eyes again.

He was up by the time she came back into the room. She gave him a guilty look.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he said. He sounded muzzy and she knew he would be until he had some caffeine in him.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"God yes," he said, making her giggle.

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah," he said. "Except for this bed." He rubbed at his midsection. "Was I right or was I right?"

"Yeah, okay," she admitted. She started the coffeepot going, then poked her head into his little fridge for milk. After a second, she realized that nobody had been in there in weeks, except to put the pizza away. The milk was now cheese, the sides of the plastic bottle ballooning out. There was multicolored fuzz growing on some leftovers in a plastic-wrapped bowl. Besides some chipotle sauce, browning mustard, and some ketchup packets, there was the leftover pizza from the night before, a few cans of iffy beer and probably still good soda, but that was all.

"Hmm," she said, taking the nasty stuff out and disposing of it, trying not to gag or ew out loud. She closed the fridge door and turned to open some cabinets, finding some powdered coffee lightener. "Jackpot!" She shook the little canister and he nodded.

"So how would you feel about visitors today?" Manny asked as she set the coffee and some pizza in front of him.

"Okay," he said. "Who?"

"I was thinking just Spin and Emma," she said. "But only if you're sure."

He looked at her like she was crazy.

"I mean," she said. "I just want you to be comfortable. If anything gets too weird…"

"If?" he asked. "What do you mean '_if_?' What about this _hasn't_ been weird?"

"Yeah, okay," she said. "But weird is still a relative term."

He shrugged.

"You promise to tell me if anything gets to be too much, though, right?"

"Um, okay," he said.

"Seriously," Manny said. "Promise."

"I promise," he said, dutifully, like he hoped she'd shut up.

After they finished eating, Jay got into the shower and Manny had to force herself to stop thinking of joining him in there. She was reminded of this random dream she'd had the night before that had included the two of them singing in the shower with a full orchestra that might or might not have been made up of rubber ducks.

He didn't sing that morning, of course. Manny hadn't really expected him to be in the mood for it, but she missed it all the same.

While she waited for him to get out of there, she checked her phone, finding a couple of texts, including one from Emma that was nothing but question marks. She fired off a text in reply: _He's doing okay. Pretty calm. Asks a lot of questions._

That was a problem. He asked way too many questions and it was getting harder to keep the tone positive. Pretty soon they might have to talk about things that she wasn't sure he was ready to hear. It seemed like every story had some element of criminality to it.

She didn't want to lie to him, but she really thought that she should talk to a professional before she started to provide details about who he used to be. Who he'd been in his teens, before he started to really grow up and admit that he cared about other people.

Her phone chimed in her hand so suddenly that she almost dropped it. _How about you? _Emma wanted to know.

_I'm great,_ Manny lied. Then her phone rang.

"You're so full of it," Emma said.

"Em," Manny said. "I'm _fine_."

"If you say so," Emma said. "So what are you guys doing today?"

"Actually, I was wondering if you and your lovely husband would maybe come over later."

"Sure," Emma said. "Awesome. I'll bring some groceries."

Manny tried to talk her out of going to any trouble, but…

"Oh please," Emma said. "It's _Jay_. In the best of circumstances he only keeps beer and instant coffee in the house."

"There was also some furry meat in there," Manny said. "Looks like it might've been Sloppy Joe. But I can take care of it." But Emma seemed to have put her bossy boots on and wouldn't take no for an answer. Truth be told, Manny wasn't exactly looking forward to grocery shopping anyway so she eventually stopped arguing.

"So how's four o' clock sound?" Emma asked.

"Perfect."

When Jay came out of the shower, smelling of steam and soap, he went directly to the bedroom and called out "It's all yours," the same way he would have any other day (or at least, any day she didn't climb in there with him). It probably wasn't a good idea to assign significance to that, as much as she wanted to. It just seemed so familiar.

Her eyes stung, and she blinked them a few times. _He's here,_ she reminded herself. _And he's gonna be okay._ This didn't stop her from full-out sobbing in the shower. When she got out, she tried to blame her red eyes on shampoo, but he didn't buy it, tried to apologize. This just made her cry some more. It was just so horrible to see him looking at her all big-eyed and worried, like a kid, when the old Jay practically needed to be standing at the gates of Hell before he even thought to cop to any wrongdoing.

And, obviously none of this was even his fault this time.

"No," she squeaked. "No. It's okay. I'm j-j-just…" He put an awkward hand on top of her head and somehow that led to her resting her head on his chest while she cried it out.

_Great, Manny_, she berated herself. _Fuck it all up again. You are supposed to be comforting _him_, dumbass!_

"I'm so sorry," Manny said when she was done. "Gawd, I'm an idiot. I was just so…I dunno…"

"S'okay," he said. His arms were around her, stiffly, like he was afraid to really touch her. She realized much later than she should have that she was only wearing a towel and that this might have contributed to his discomfort.

Sure enough, she looked up at him and saw that his face was red and he was having a hard time knowing where to look. "Oh shit," she said, looking down at herself. "I'm just gonna go put some clothes on and make this all a little less ridiculous, okay?"

"Sure," he said.

Manny thanked God she never even considered nursing as a career option because she was setting a new record for inappropriateness.

_Could be worse,_ she thought as she wiggled into some jeans and one of his t-shirts. _At least the towel didn't slip_. She took a second to picture that and then tried to imagine what she'd say to Max when he came over later and found his son catatonic on the pullout. Why did anyone trust her enough to leave her alone with him? Surely she was doing more harm than good.

"Okay," she said, coming back into the living room fully dressed. "Please believe that I'm not usually like this."

"Like what?" he said. He was flipping through a magazine from the end table, trying to act natural.

"Like Slutzilla," she said. "From Planet of the Hoes."

"Planet of the Hoes?" he asked. Some Jay-esque comments about that ("How's the weather there this time of year?" "Is it a long trip to the Planet of the Hoes, because I got some vacation time saved…") entered Manny's head, but the Jay in front of her just smiled uncertainly.

"Yeah, well," Manny said.

"It wasn't that bad," he said.

"Yeah, it was," Manny said. "It's like I know a lot more about you than you know about me right now and that means that all this touchy-feely-grabby is not okay."

"But you're usually touchy-feely-grabby, right?" he asked. "Seems like you are."

"Li'l bit," Manny said.

"Uh-huh. And we're close enough that you usually stay here, right?" Jay asked. Manny nodded.

"We've seen each other naked?"

"Yeah," Manny said. "We were engaged at one point."

" Really?" he asked. "And we're not now?"

"We weren't ready. We broke up," Manny said, hoping he didn't ask for details. If he did ask, she guessed she'd have to tell him, but she really didn't want to discuss such unpleasantness just yet. "A few months after that, we got back together. I come back up here whenever I can to be with you and you put up with a lot of long-distance nonsense for me."

"Okay," he said, after a long, awkward pause during which Manny berated herself for weirding him out again.

"Well…um…" he continued. Finally, he said, "How bout I just let you know when it's too much?"

"Sounds fair," she said. "So. About the hugging…"

"The hugging is good," he said.

"I'll just make sure I have clothes on when I feel the urge to glomp."

He chuckled a little. "Glomp. Why do I get the feeling I'm gonna need a Manny-to-English dictionary?"

"Nah," she said. "The immersion method works best."

"I'll keep that in mind," he said. "So what's next?"

"Not clue one," Manny said. Jay seemed to consider this for a second.

"Well, shit," he said. "Good to know someone's in charge." It cracked her up.

11.

After class, Emma went to the Dot. She talked to Spin and between them they decided that she'd go over to Jay's first and he'd join her as soon as his shift ended. She meant to just pop in for five minutes on her way to the store, but she got held up first by Peter then by what felt like everyone else in the world.

Peter didn't do well with suspense. He saw her and came right over, asking if she'd spoken to Manny yet. What did she say? Was Emma going to see them? Did they need anything? He managed to ask all the pertinent questions without mentioning Jay by name. Emma thought that was a little weird once she noticed it, but even with both Peter and Spin taking that precaution, Sav heard Manny's name and asked how things were going with Jay, which made Holly J's ears perk up.

"Oh my God! You saw him?" she yelped. "How is he?" Everybody stared at her.

"What?" Holly J. asked, composing herself. "I used to work here, remember? I've served his hung-over ass more coffee and French fries…" They kept staring until she rolled her eyes. "Maybe I wanna know how he's doing, okay?" she said. "Jeez!"

Emma and Spinner gave a warning look to Peter, who looked like he was just dying to say something that might cause Sinclair style hellfire and damnation to rain down upon them. He kept his mouth shut.

"Thanks, J." Spinner said. "We'll let you know when we know more, okay?" She nodded.

When Chantay Black showed up and started asking questions, Emma groaned. Jay was a hot topic. Apparently word about him had gotten around and a lot of people had streamed the video of him on the 'net, so there would be trouble keeping things under wraps.

It was amazing. A guy could hang around for years, become known to most of the young'uns only as Spinner's friend (or as Emma heard Alli Bhandari refer to him, Scruffy McBackwardhat) but have something happen to him and suddenly everyone's interested. Only a very select few of them really seemed to care about his actual welfare, though. There were Sav, Peter, and Holly J. of course, but there was also this one kid, Eli his name was, who told Emma about how Jay towed his car a couple of times, and had hooked him up with a wholesale dealer so he could buy parts and fix the thing himself to save some money.

"It's not that big of a deal, but he's a pretty cool guy and when I saw him on the news…" he said.

The kid looked like he was at a loss for words. Emma nodded to show she got it.

"Anyway, I'm really glad to know that you guys found him."

"Wait," Sav said. "_He_'s the one who saved Morty?"

"Oh God," Holly J. groaned.

"Morty?" Emma asked.

"That gigantic eyesore of a hearse across the street," she said. "He calls it Morty. The same way some guys name their privates…"

Eli looked at her like she'd just slapped his Mama.

"Don't you have a _bus _to catch?" Eli asked. Sav snorted, which made Holly J. glare at him. Emma decided to beat it out of there while they were bickering.

After what felt like about ten years, Emma finally climbed Jay's rickety stairway and knocked on his door.

"Who is it?" Manny asked.

"Strippergram," Emma replied.

"Hope you didn't forget the whipped cream this time." Manny said, opening the door. This was a typically Manny thing to say, but the way she grabbed Emma, making her drop the grocery bags, and pulled her into a rib-crushing hug it was pretty clear that she was not feeling all that Mannyish. Emma pulled back and looked her friend in the eye, making her best attempt at the Everything-Is-Going-to-be-Alright look. She wasn't sure she had the skill. It was something she felt she should have picked up, having lived with Archie Simpson and one Gavin Mason, two absolute masters of the look.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," Manny said.

"Where is he?"

"In the bedroom," Manny said. "Doing computer stuff."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Manny lied through her teeth.

Emma narrowed her eyes.

"Okay," Manny said. "We had a fight. Like a mini-fight. A tiff, or something. Not that big a deal."

Emma decided she'd get it out of her later.

"So let's do this," Manny said. Then she called out for Jay.

"You decent?" Emma called, almost expecting a "bite your tongue, woman!" in response, but he came into the tiny living room without a word and locked eyes with her for a second, giving her a shaky smile before deciding that the floor was safer to look at.

She made the first move, shruggingly introducing herself and offering her hand, which he took and squeezed just like he was supposed to. And his hands were perfectly steady, thankfully. The one thing Emma got from watching the news video with Manny the twenty-six times they did, besides the relief of seeing him alive of course, was the way his hands shook and his voice cracked on the video. He wasn't a hundred percent yet, but looked so much better than he had on the news.

"I'm gonna go ahead and put this stuff away," Manny said, after watching them stare at each other for a few seconds.

"So," Emma began. "Um…"

"You…" she tried again. "I…"

"Why don't you have a seat?" he asked

"Itsreallygoodtoseeyou," she blurted, at the same time. Then there was a flurry of You go firsts and go aheads.

"Emma, sit down," Manny said over her shoulder. "Jay, say thank you."

"Um…thank you," Jay said, gesturing at the couch again. Emma perched on the end of it and Jay sat on the other side.

"It's usually best to do what she says," Emma said.

"Damn right," Manny said.

"I'm starting to get that idea," Jay said, cracking another shaky smile.

"Took you long enough," Manny sing-songed.

"Manny!" Emma said, but Jay laughed.

"Wait," Manny said, holding up a box of Kraft dinner that she'd been putting into the cabinet. "I take it back. It only took a day for him to catch on this time around. Took months last time, more than a year even."

"What can I say?" Jay said. "I'm a genius."

"Pretty fly for a white guy," Manny said. She brought out cans of soda, putting them out on top of some CD cases that were on the table. Jay wasn't a coaster kind of a guy.

"So what'd you guys do all day?" Emma asked.

Jay shrugged. "Hung out. Did some computer stuff."

"You guys get in touch with the bank?" Emma wanted to know. They never did find his wallet.

"Yeah, we did," Jay said.

"He got lucky, considering" Manny said. "I mean, there was _bubkes_ in the checking, but his savings were untouched." She gestured at Jay with her glass. "Another reason why you should always listen to me. The savings account was a great idea. You'd still be stashing your cash in the closet if you had your way."

He looked at her in disbelief and Manny seemed to realize that she'd crossed the TMI line and probably not for the first time. Emma braced for the yelling to start. If there was one thing the two of them were good at, it was fighting. Their fights turned downright operatic.

Jay took a breath, let it out, and took a sip of his soda. Emma's eyebrows shot to the hairline.

"What?" Jay asked.

"Nothing," Emma said.

"Seriously, what is it?"

"I can't believe I just said all that. I just totally channeled my dad," Manny broke in. "I'm such an asshat. I'm sorry."

Jay wrinkled his nose and flapped his free hand in a no big deal gesture.

"But…" Manny said.

"It's nothing," Jay said, a little sharply.

Emma studied her fingernails.

"Sorry," Jay said.

"No," Manny said. "I'm—"

It was going to be a long night.


End file.
